


music from an angel

by kihadu



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Fallen Castiel, Fluff, M/M, everyone is happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 20:33:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1009764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kihadu/pseuds/kihadu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following S8, Castiel travels to find who he is without his grace. Dean stays, and tries to find himself. Sam gets married.</p>
            </blockquote>





	music from an angel

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this all in one day. I should have been doing my assignment. At the very least, I should have been working on something else, and not making something new. But oh well.

_Someone asked me what home was and all I could think of were the stars on the tip of your tongue, the flowers sprouting from your mouth, the roots entwined in the gaps between your fingers, the ocean echoing inside of your ribcage.  
_ \- e.e. cummings

 

* * *

 

 

Castiel can play the piano. He could do this before he fell, and he can do it after, but he can also understand quantum mechanics. It’s not something that ever comes up in conversation so it’s not something that he really knows about himself. Whenever they came across a piano it was in someone’s house, grieving parent and child smeared into the carpet. Even so much as noticing a shiny Seiler seemed uncouth. Course, the boys don’t care about that, but Castiel carefully studied the rules of humanity and sticks to them, so he doesn’t touch a piano until years after his grace is taken.

But things begin to change long before that.

Sam gets married, for one. She’s a nice woman, Sarah, her name is, much shorter than all of them but that doesn’t mean anything. She has brown hair she never seems to know what to do with, and a wide smile. She’s never quite certain how to act around Dean because she’s never quite certain of their relationship. She knows… things. Some things. She knows a little of Hell, a little of Lucifer. She knows Castiel used to be an angel, and she knows about hellhounds and werewolves, but it’s all academic. Like she’s read about electricity in a book but never seen a light bulb burn up bright.

But Sam met her, and she didn’t die, and she asked him out for a drink, and she didn’t die, and when months had passed of Sam searching for hunts in her area and she still hadn’t revealed herself to be a cruel and terrible creature Dean reluctantly gave his blessing. Sarah knows she’s an outsider to their little Team Free Will, and her response to that is hostility and hearty dinners. That, more than anything, puts Dean at ease. Even now he doesn’t trust people who are nice to him, but then, he doesn’t trust people who aren’t nice to him, either.

One day, early on, Sarah asked Sam what she has to do to get on his brother’s good side, and Sam had shrugged. “Save his life, maybe. Or pie. He likes pie.”

Those kinds of opportunities are few and far between, at least for Sarah, so she makes Dean pie and slowly, very, very slowly, Dean begins to treat her a little less like a demon and a little more like a person.

Thomas was the one who made it all work, really, because having a baby gives a point of conversation, and Dean loves Thomas, loves that Sam has a kid, has a wife and a family, a real and proper life.

 

Castiel is more difficult to make happy than Sam. Sam has simple desires, and now that he has Sarah and Thomas and a job he’s quite content with himself. But Castiel, he’s all angel trying to be all human, and it doesn’t work. He knows it doesn’t work, and he doesn’t like being around people who didn’t know him for the fearsome creature that he remembers being.

He needs help, too, with simple, stupid things he should know. He knows so much, but the first time he needs to urinate he doesn’t realise, because the sensations his body are telling him are strange and unfamiliar, and when he finally realised he didn’t know that men are meant to lift the seat, first, or that he’s meant to wash his hands. Hunger is easy, because his stomach growls at him and that is a logical connection, but his first headache is awful and he doesn’t know what to do. Sleep is uncomfortable, though he’s experienced that before, but it’s different without his grace lingering in the edges.

He doesn’t know how to open a bank account. He doesn’t know how to sign his name. He doesn’t know how to drive a car. He doesn’t know how to deal with cashiers. He doesn’t know how much food one person is meant to consume. He doesn’t know how to wash his hair - there is shampoo, and conditioner, but he has to read the bottles before he knows which one to use first.

Dressing is a chore. He must change his underwear everyday, Dean tells him, but not his jeans, and a shirt can be recycled but underwear and socks need to be washed between wear. He doesn’t really understand, but he obeys. Shaving is a chore. He’s seen others do it, of course, but doing it himself results in dozens of cuts all along his jaw. Dean offers to do it, his eyes bright at the idea of being close to Castiel, and while that would be nice Castiel needs to know how to do things himself. He informs Dean of this several times, until Dean knows not to help until Castiel asks him first.

Sarah discomforts him, because in knowing that he was somehow damaged she treats him like a cripple, and then realises what she’s doing and tries to treat Castiel the same as she treats Dean: all brusque words and awkward pauses. So Castiel avoids her, mostly, at least for the first year, and then Thomas is born, and he realises he needs to get away.

He tells Dean like this: they are together in a diner. The chips are cold and they have nothing to do. They never have anything to do, and Castiel is getting bored. Dean is not. He’s happy. He’s got his brother and he’s got Castiel. He’s got food. He’s not dying. The world keeps hurtling through space. Things are good.

“I’m trapped,” says Castiel, and Dean frowns. “In this body. I need to go.”

“We tried,” says Dean, because they did. Sam was dating Sarah and Dean was trying to get Castiel his grace back.

“No, I mean. I want to travel. I want to see things.” He doesn’t know how to explain it. He almost extends his arms to describe how he’s feeling, how he wants to feel, but the skin is so limiting now that he’s got nothing buzzing behind it. He’s so tiny, so feeble. Sometimes he hates that he has to eat.

“You can’t,” says Dean. He doesn’t know why, because they’ve been safe for a while, and Castiel understands the basics of human interaction. He just knows that he doesn’t want Castiel to go. He wants him here. Needs him here. At his side.

“Dean.”

Dean sighs, and nods slowly. If Castiel needs to travel, then he should travel.

 

At first Castiel and Dean travel together. It’s hunting, sort of. Lazy hunting. They go where Castiel wants to go and then Dean sees if there’s anything for them to do between looking at mountains and statues and museums. For Castiel the sights are important, but they’re not as important as trying to be human. He doesn’t like hunting. It’s what Dean does, and the way Dean talks about it, the way Dean acts about it, he knows that being a hunter doesn’t make him human. It’s too close to the world of monsters, and he’s still too inhuman to feel comfortable with the closeness of those beasts.

But Dean doesn’t like him going without him, and at first, at least, Castiel doesn’t like going without Dean, but he hates to sit at the bunker, and, later, when Sarah and Sam and Thomas move to Chicago, he doesn’t like sitting there, either.

He wants to learn how to be human. Dean tells him, no, no you don’t, because you’re not human, not really. But Castiel has obeyed Heaven and he has obeyed Hell, and he is tired of listening to anyone except for himself. Dean lets him go because he had no choice, so Castiel sees England and Belgium and the Pacific Islands, and Dean frets about Castiel using money and talking to flight attendants and buying beer and sleeping alone. Or not sleeping alone. Both things bother Dean, for much the same reasons, but he can’t put words to what he’s feeling.

 

After the first few mistakes, lost baggage, and then a form not filled in properly that a kind lady corrects for him, Castiel settles, and learns. He reads a lot. He likes it, because he can read a book and then look up across the common room of a hostel and see someone else reading, and they’ll swap paperbacks and talk. He reads dozens of books all across Europe like this, carrying only one or two at a time. He finds a few monsters, but he doesn’t fight them. Not because Dean tells him not to, though Dean does, but because he’s afraid of pain. Dean’s told him about 2014, and though it’s nearly 2015 now he doesn’t want that future to become real, not now and not ever.

In Switzerland he falls and needs stitches, but he refuses to take anything for the pain. He’s so terrified that the nurse complies, and she doesn’t mind having another story about a stupid man thinking he can deal with pain. But he just grits his teeth and pushes through it, and she’s a little disappointed, but impressed all the same. Castiel tells Dean, who worries about the injury and tells him again and again, why don’t you just come home? There’s so much in America. We can travel everywhere together. But Dean’s glad that Castiel is okay, and free, doing what he likes. He’s glad that he’s not turned into the junkie he saw in 2014.

 

Dean, at home and without a Sarah, without Sam, worries a lot. He wanders around the bunker and around Chicago, where he bugs Kevin, who’s gone back to school. He’s the reason they moved there. He told them a few weeks after Sarah found she was pregnant that he wanted to go to school. Dean talked to Sam, who talked to Sarah, who had already realised that she was in a relationship with not just Sam, but also Sam-And-Dean. She said sure, she can go to Chicago, and although she didn’t really want to all those worries were washed away when she got there, and again, later, when Thomas was born, because Thomas loves Chicago. He loves the air, the noises, the lights.

Sam loves his job. Sarah loves hers. She loves the cafe down the street. She loves the museums. The streets. The taxi-drivers. A few months after they’ve moved there one of Sarah’s friends gets a job in Chicago, and she finds other people, and she’s happy. Sam is happy, too, and Kevin is back at school, so Dean is happy. He misses Castiel, but at least Castiel is alive and out there.

He hunted a little, until Sam got a full-time day job, and they couldn’t bounce around at all hours searching for vampires anymore. So Dean bounces around not doing anything much, rather lost.

Charlie visits, then. He wonders if it’s something supernatural that brings her to him the moment he’s feeling lost. Well, not the very moment, perhaps.

He’s been feeling lost ever since Sam told him he really liked Sarah, really liked her. And then saying goodbye to Castiel. Everyone is striking down roots, while Dean is still a nothing person wandering about in a nothing life.

He feels old and tired when he goes to bars looking for women. He doesn’t look for men. One time he tried, merely out of curiosity, but Castiel sent him a photo of a castle on the edge of the Danube just as he was offering to buy the man a drink.

“Boyfriend?” asked the man, when Dean smiled at the phone.

“Not really,” said Dean, but he stops looking for men all the same. Women, too, but he’s more practised in having no emotional connection with the women he touches. With men, it’s like an electric rope. He imagines he can feel that man, his fingers softly on the inside of Dean’s arm, just below the elbow, for days. And that was only a kind touch of understanding apology.

He is steadfast in refusing his mind to wander and wonder how Castiel’s fingers would feel on his arm. He knows that if he starts, he will not stop, and Castiel is too far away for that kind of longing to begin.

Hunting has been his purpose ever since he could remember. He doesn’t know how to do anything else.

He’s gone back to the bunker when Charlie finds him.

“I went to see Sam. Met his lady,” says Charlie with a wide smile. “She’s really great. The kid, too.”

The bunker feels pointless without a hunt. It’s a place of safety, but without Sam it doesn’t feel safe. It feels empty and lonely. He’s drinking whiskey, though it’s not yet noon. He’s done the white picket fence thing, and he didn’t like that, and he’s done the end of the world, and he didn’t like it. He’s never done much school to know if he likes that, but he never liked research. He likes cars, sure, but he likes the Impala. Everything else is a lesser being, not worthy of him. Like that man in the bar, who Dean couldn’t say yes to, not while Castiel is tracing his way through the tropics above Australia.

 

Castiel still doesn’t know he can play the piano, but he’s learning a lot about himself. He likes fish, but only real, proper fish, caught from the sea. He doesn’t like salads but he doesn’t mind spinach when it’s cooked inside things. He likes hard mattresses and soft pillows. He likes hoodies, and wears them even when the weather isn’t appropriate. He likes dogs, and cats, and his favourite part of flying is landing. Not entirely because of the destination, but because of the noise and the rush as the plane digs into the ground and tries desperately to slow down. It reminds him a little of being an angel, and those kinds of memories have stopped aching so much. He doesn’t like working, but he does like holding money he earned. He always feels slightly guilty when he uses one of the tricks Dean taught him before he left America to falsify his way through paying for a room, or paying for a meal, though he never felt bad when he had to do something similar as an angel.

 

“I don’t know what to do,” Dean says. He’s hoping Charlie will tell him, like Bobby would tell him, or his father, or the world. There was always a purpose, always a goal. His goal right now is to drink his whiskey. He does that, and reaches for the bottle to fill up his glass again, but Charlie has put it on the sideboard. He glares at her, and she glares back.

“What do you want to do? Because let me tell you, moping around here isn’t doing anything. That’s not a life, that’s just sad.”

He looks at her. She looks bright and colourful, like always. He feels drab and grey. Suddenly, he’s sick of his hunter clothes. Sam’s started, slowly, to wear things that aren’t plaid. Castiel’s trenchcoat is hanging in his room in the bunker.

Dean’s sick of cheap suits and worn boots.

“I want new clothes,” he decides. “And then you’re going to teach me how to play video games.”

 

 

Castiel sits in a pub in Australia. He’s not entirely sure where in Australia he is, but he has a backpack with three litres of water, and his face is sweat-stained and streaked with dust. If he opens the pub door he’ll look out onto a bland desert, but the pub itself is filled with merchandise about a film he’s never seen. He takes a photo and sends it to Dean. There’s a message waiting from Kevin, a mathematics question, so he asks the barkeep for a pencil and scratches out an answer.

“Where are you from, then?” asks the man. It’s a slow day, no tourists, and the locals all busy or sleeping.

“America,” says Castiel. “Don’t hold it against me.”

The man gives a small smile.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says. He likes tourists who can, at least, speak English. “Where are you off to next?”

“I don’t know,” says Castiel. “I’m just travelling.”

“Alone?” asks the man. “Must get a bit lonely. Most people travel in packs.”

“I’ve met many pleasant people along the way.” He takes a moment to type in the answer he got for the math equation.

“Got people waiting for you at home?” asks the man, seeing the phone.

Castiel takes a moment to consider. He knows he can go back to Dean, but the word ‘home’ has always been so strange to him. But Dean is somewhere in the world, and there is Sam, and there are people who want him and love him. “Yes,” he decides. “I do.”

“That makes it all better,” smiles the man.

 

 

He’s in Adelaide when he finds out he can play the piano. He’s walked through their mall, taken a photo of the two silver balls because Dean will find them strange, and the metal pigs, because Sarah will like them. He sat out by the river eating his lunch while school children rowed past, and then he wandered back to the city to find his hostel. There was a piano sitting on the sidewalk - footpath, he remembers. That’s what they call it here. There’s a sign that says “Play me, I’m yours!” and so Castiel sits down and puts his fingers on the keys. He knows music, just like he knows mathematics and physics and chemical bonds. He used to see the world in every dimension possible; he could deconstruct a person atom by atom. Music is not all that more difficult, so he presses on the keys, learning where each sound is in relation to the other. The piano is slightly out of tune, but he plays anyway.

A small crowd forms, nodding appreciatively. He finishes, and they applaud. He gives an awkward bow, slightly abashed, but pleased. He can no longer watch sounds as waves reverberating through the universe - Marconi wasn’t all wrong when he thought sound never dies - but at least he can still make something pretty.

 

 

Dean plays video games, and Thomas talks in real and proper sentences, and Castiel still isn’t home. Dean talks about this to everyone who will listen, even, eventually, the woman at the cafe he goes to. There’s pie there, and with Thomas around Sarah doesn’t have time to make Dean pie anymore.

“You’re always alone,” says the woman, putting his coffee and pie in front of him. “And always checking your phone. Who you waiting for?”

“My,” he hesitates. “Friend. He’s gone travelling.”

“Friend?” asks the woman, curious at the pause.

“He won’t come home. I don’t know,” says Dean. “He said he wanted to see the world, but it’s been over a year. How much of the world does he have left to see?” He wonders if Castiel has forgotten that he’s mortal, now, and there’s only so much time left. He’s wasting it all looking at rocks when he could be with Dean eating pie.

“Have you asked him to come home?”

“I can’t do that,” says Dean.

“Then why don’t you travel with him?”

“I don’t like planes,” mumbles Dean. He feels that it’s a pathetic excuse, but Castiel had told him it was a perfectly reasonable one before he had submitted to a hug goodbye.

Truth is, Castiel misses Dean but he misses being an angel more, and he doesn’t think Dean would be very conducive to his learning how to be without his grace.

 

 

Garth comes to visit, by which time Dean has been working in a bookshop for over four months.

It’s nice to get back with the novels he remembers reading when hunting was nice and easy. He has a little flat, and slowly he begins putting books on the shelves. Castiel’s been reading, too, so they text about what books they have and haven’t read. Dean’s not so limited as Castiel, who borrows books from travellers and swaps them a hundred miles on for something else. In this way he reads the second two parts of Lord of the Rings, but not the first. He has volume three of the complete Oscar Wilde works for two weeks, and then swaps with two teenagers going the other direction along the coast for a battered copy of the seventh book of The Wheel of Time. But then, Castiel reads books in Spanish and French and Finnish, flips through Arabic encyclopedias and reads Anna Karenina in its original.

Dean keeps to his English books, his sci-fi and fantasy. It’s nice to read about magic rather than supernatural, and it’s nice to not have to hunt the demons within the pages. Horror’s alright, but he likes it best when it’s not real-world. That’s too close to home. He touches nothing that’s too religious, but neither does Castiel.

Garth has an enthusiastic dinner with Sam and Sarah, and the next day takes Thomas out to the park so that Sarah and Sam can have an afternoon off. Thomas likes Garth, and Thomas likes Dean, and for one horrid, awkward moment one of the men at the park think they’re the parents.

“Oh, no,” says Garth. “His boyfriend’s travelling, and this is his nephew. I’m just a family friend.” The man blushes, apologises for his mistake, while Dean blinks at the word ‘boyfriend’.

Garth’s still hunting. He’s got keys to the bunker, and he’s promised not to let anyone else in unless things get bad. End of the world bad, that is, so Garth hasn’t told anyone. At the moment he’s got seven stitches down one shoulder, and there’s a crooked cut across one cheek. It doesn’t really stand out, but Thomas pokes it and asks what happened.

“A shapeshifter attacked me,” he says honestly.

“Ohhhh! Cool!” says Thomas. “Did you kill it?”

“Of course I did,” scoffs Garth.

“I killed a dragon yesterday!” says Thomas. He mimes stabbing an invisible beast in the heart. “Jenny helped,” he adds brightly.

“It’s so cool that you join in on their pretend,” says the man, still standing by, while Thomas runs off back to the playground. “My wife always tells me off when I do, but I don’t see the harm. Telling them they’re wrong just doesn’t seem helpful.”

“They need to know how to fight the monsters under the bed,” says Garth, very seriously. Dean’s still stuck back on ‘boyfriend’, so he doesn’t really listen to their conversation.

Later, he does find Garth poking Sam’s dog with the flat of a silver knife.

“What are you doing?” he cries. “We tested the dog! Don’t you think we would have tested the dog?”

“It’s been a while,” apologises Garth. “I didn’t want you to have forgotten.”

“I was doing this before you were born,” says Dean. “Leave Muppet alone.”

That night, when he checks the time and sees that Castiel’s probably awake, he doesn’t know what to text him. Normally he tells him things about his day, mundane things like how blue the sky is or what books people bought. But he feels strange, and lies there a long time with his phone on his chest not sure what to say.

 _Accidentally hunted a bunyip today_ , comes the text, vibrating hard against his sternum. _They are very strange creatures. How are you?_

Dean wondered how one could accidentally hunt anything. He’d only ever hunted things on purpose, but then, all he’d ever done was hunt, once.

“I miss you,” he whispers. He has no other words inside of him, so he types them in, and presses send.

On the other side of the world Castiel is squinting at the harsh light filtering in through the train window. He tilts the phone so that he can see the screen through the glare.

_I miss you._

Castiel swallows. He knows he should go home.

 

 

Dean makes friends. Sam does, too. It’s unexpected and strange. Kevin makes friends, but that’s natural and expected. He’s still a kid, really, and not that far from being at school. He still talks to the Winchesters. He likes being treated like an adult, because the people he meets at college don’t understand about monsters or his finger or the fact that his mother was killed by creatures no one even believes in. But it’s also nice being stupid and silly and young with people who are carefree and simple. He has his dorm mates, and he makes friends in his classes and meets a few girls. He doesn’t date anyone, but it’s nice to have people interested in him. It makes him feel less broken and hopeless.

Sam’s friends come from work, and from Sarah, and from Thomas.

Dean’s come from the bookshop, from Charlie and from Garth. Hunters come past and borrow the spare bedroom, grateful for a clean bathroom and a soft bed. Dean likes talking to them because he’d hate to forget about his past life, and he likes how the ones that visit talk to him like he used to talk to Bobby: with respect, laced with a bit of awe. Charlie’s friends are stranger, and less somber. They talk excitedly about things and never tell him off if they don’t know, they’ll just shove books and movies and games in his direction.

One night, sitting in a restaurant, he sits back in his chair and lets the conversation wash over him. He never thought he’d have this. People around him. People who wanted to know him for him. Then he hears someone make a comment on ghosts and he leaps into the conversation, Charlie next to him, to argue the proper way to battle demons of the night.

 

After that day in Adelaide Castiel plays instruments often. A few places have a battered piano in the corner. A lot of people have guitars, others have ukuleles. A bed and breakfast in New Zealand has a violin, and he walks out into the rare sunshine to play to the deer, who frown at him through high fences. He runs into someone with a cello, busking on a street in Brazil, and she kindly lets him play it. It is not the same as a piano, but he loves it all the same. He gives her all the cash in her wallet because he is so in love with music, and he wants to go home so that he can read books and buy a cello. He wants to go home for Dean, too, but he wanted to find out who he is without his grace, without heaven and without wings. He thinks he’s done that, but he stays in Rio a little longer just to be certain.

 

 

His boss has gotten used to him having his phone so close to him all the time. She’s a nice person, tall and Japanese, called Miyu. She teases him about it, which at first he wasn’t okay with. Dean wasn’t used to anyone except Sam teasing him, but when he realised the other staff at the bookshop tease each other all the time he relaxes. It’s alright, he tells himself every morning. You can do this. You can be a normal person, with a normal job, who makes normal jokes, with normal people.

It’s slow going. It’s been so long since he walked in the waking world. In his first week someone asks him where the Discworld books are, and he has to look them up on the computer because he is only new, but when the customer has gone away he goes back to the shelf and goes through them. He picks up _Mort_ , and _Night Watch_ , choosing them at random, and when he finishes them a few days later he decides that Vimes would get along with Sam and the real Death, the one who likes crap takeaway, would be irritated by Terry Pratchett’s Death. But Castiel would probably like him. Trying to understand humanity and never quite getting it right.

He tells Castiel about them, and Castiel says that he’s already read a few, he likes Tiffany Aching the best, but Rincewind seems alright, and that’s when Miyu finds him texting as he restocks the sports section.

“Talk to your girlfriend in your time off,” she scolds.

“Not my girlfriend,” says Dean, immediately defensive.

“Boyfriend, then,” she says. “Put it away.”

He complies, because he wants to talk to Castiel but also he wants a job, but after a bit he realises that Miyu actually doesn’t mind, not so long as the work gets done.

 

When Castiel is in Bolivia Dean goes out for drinks with his workmates. Well, there’s no connection there. Castiel is in Bolivia. Dean goes out for drinks, and because the timezones are close enough he sits at the table with a drink in his hand and his phone by his elbow. Castiel’s gone out drinking, too, with a group of friends he made at the hostel just that morning. Dean’s jealous for several minutes together, because he hasn’t seen Castiel’s face in so long, and those people just stumbled across it and immediately became friends. Castiel pulled Dean out of Hell and even then they weren’t friends for ages.

“What’s up, sour-puss?” asks Nathan. “You look like you ate a lemon.”

Dean’s phone vibrates, and everyone can feel it through the table.

“Ohhh,” said Miyu. “It’s not-your-girlfriend texting.”

Since he hasn’t told them Castiel’s name, and he has never confirmed anything beyond “not my girlfriend”, that’s what they call him. They know that he reads, and knows that he travels, and beyond that they don’t know anything. But then, they don’t know much about Dean, beyond his brother and his brother’s family.

“Where is she, now?”

“Bolivia,” says Dean. He holds out the phone for Nathan to see. It’s just a picture of a cocktail, made fuzzy around the edges by bright lights. He’s never corrected any of their presumptions about Castiel, and just because he’s trapped in Jimmy’s body doesn’t mean he’s filled it out completely. Castiel isn’t male, he’s an angel. Fallen, graceless, but still an angel. Dean refuses to forget that.

“Going to send a photo back?” asks Lee.

“Your drink is too boring,” says Oscar. “Send a photo of mine.”

“I can’t do that,” says Dean, horrified. “That would be lying.” He takes a photo of his beer and sends that. There’s no immediate response, but he doesn’t expect any. Castiel’s probably talking about the land rights of the indigenous people of Bolivia, while across from him there’s a firm argument starting between Leslie and Paul about Alexander being called The Great, when really he was a tyrant. He smiles, because he’s happy, then he frowns because he’s happy and there’s no one around him he knows, not even Charlie. Not even Garth. For a brief moment he panics, but then it subsides.

 _Are you feeling okay?_ comes the text.

 _Yeah_ , he replies, because yeah, he is. He’s feeling good. Better and better everyday. Before he hits send he adds, _better if you were here_ , because that’s true, too, but then he worries that Castiel will think he’s unhappy and broken without him, and Kevin’s told him that he needs to get rid of his co-dependant attitudes. So he deletes it, because just because it’s true doesn’t mean it needs to be said.

 

Castiel, in a weird little bar in Bolivia, drinks his cocktail, and when the others notice the piano in the corner he gets up to play them something. He doesn’t bother with waiting for prompts so he can pretend he is doing it only under duress. These people want music, and he likes playing music. The piano is out of tune, and quite badly too, but no one really cares. It’s a bar, not a concert hall, and he plays tunes that he’s only heard pieces of, from radios in hostels or in shops. The people are French and Australian and Japanese and German, and they laugh and clap, and everyone is best friends for a night.

In the morning the Australian is going south and the German couple are going north. Castiel wants to stay around for a while. He needs money, anyway, and he finds a job in a museum. He’s offered the job only because he can speak so many languages, and he looks at the things and wonders where he was when he was created. There is so much of human history he does not know. So much to learn. So little time. He stays there for a couple months. Dean works at the bookshop in Chicago. Kevin goes to school. Charlie appears now and again, while Garth keeps hunting.

Sarah’s going to have another kid. Dean texts Castiel the due date, because he hopes that Castiel will come back before then, but he doesn’t ask him to. He just hopes, silently.

 

 

Dean goes to a bar. He goes on purpose, with Oscar and Lee and Leslie. Leslie’s just been dumped, and needs the consolation. Oscar’s fun to drink with. Lee just tags along.

There’s a woman at the bar. There’s a lot of women at the bar, but this one woman keeps looking at Dean. Looking and looking. Finally Dean goes over to her, because he’s drunk a little and Castiel hasn’t texted in a few days and he can’t think of any reason not to. He hasn’t had sex for months and months, and she’s pretty and not looking for anything, and he takes her home and in the morning he doesn’t feel guilty but he doesn’t tell Castiel, either.

He feels angry.

It’s been ages. Months and months and months all strung together. Photos of strange buildings and weird foods and different sunsets, and Castiel’s just. Gone.

He opens his laptop and finds a hunt and goes to kill a wendigo. He gets bashed up badly, bruised all down his face and torso, but his anger is still there. He’s so mad he isn’t even sure that he can talk to Castiel, and when he gets a text he throws his phone across the room onto the couch without even checking it. A few hours later Sam appears at his door saying, “Dude, I texted you, what the hell man?” but then he sees how Dean looks.

“What happened?”

“Where the fuck is he?” asks Dean. “He’s been to every fucking country in the whole world. What is so goddamn important?” He snatches the pack of beer from Sam and drinks one, warm.

“I dunno,” says Sam. “He’ll come home.”

“You say that every time,” says Dean. “I want him here now. What does he want? Should I get a bigger house? Perhaps he’ll want a real garden. I’m saving up. He doesn’t like cheating for money anymore. Or I could,” he shakes his head. He doesn’t know. He’s bought every book Castiel’s read, even the ones he said he didn’t like, even the ones that aren’t in English. He’s got a toothbrush, waiting. He’s brought the trenchcoat from the bunker and put it in the closet. Everything’s ready for Castiel to come back.

“What the fuck, man,” he sighs.

“He wanted you to learn to exist alone,” says Sam, sitting carefully on the couch. Dean sits, too, in the armchair of the matching set. They’re comfortable. Perfect to read in. “That’s what he told me before he went. He was worried that if he stayed you’d never learn to be alone.”

Dean stares. “What a load of bullshit!” he says. “We were happy! What’s wrong with that?”

“He wanted to learn how to be himself, too. Without any specific influence. He’s never done that, you know. He’s never just been.”

“He’s mortal,” says Dean. “He doesn’t have that much time. He should be spending it with me.” He lifts his eyes and looks at his brother. “Tell him to come home, please?”

Sam nods, but it’s a lie. He goes home and tells Sarah, who says that there’s a barbecue that weekend and will Dean be coming? Thomas wants to see him.

Sarah has long since stopped trying to understand Dean and Castiel. She scarcely knows Castiel, but she does see her husband texting him.

“Did you tell him to come back to Dean?” she asks.

Sam shakes his head. “I can’t,” he says, because too many people have told Castiel what to do. “But I told him Dean wants him to come home.” He also told Castiel about the woman he knew Dean had over the night before, but he doesn’t tell his wife that. He doesn’t really know why he told Castiel, except that it seemed right.

 

 

Castiel doesn’t mind about the woman. He wouldn’t mind if there were men, too. He would mind if Dean were to not have a place for him when he gets home, but he’s never worried about that. It doesn’t even feel like an option.

Castiel considers going home. He goes to the airport and looks and the board of flights, and very seriously considers it. There aren’t many places he wants to go anymore. He wants to go home. But he knows that if he goes home he won’t leave again, possibly forever. He goes to Mexico.

There’s a piano in Mexico. It’s very battered. The paint is chipped. There aren’t any books at the hostel, but there is the piano, so he plays it. He plays it for a very long time. He doesn’t do much in Mexico. He gets a bus to a different town where there isn’t a piano and walks around a bit, then takes a bus back to make music.

Mostly, he waits for Dean to text him.

 

 

Dean goes to the barbecue on the weekend. Thomas is there, taller than ever and excited to see his uncle. Dean plays with him, and forgets all about Castiel. Charlie shows up with her girlfriend, and they drink and they talk, and Dean doesn’t text Castiel at all. Not because he’s angry. Just. His mind is on other things. He left his phone in his jacket pocket and he doesn’t check it until he wakes up the next morning.

_There’s a piano here._

Dean smiles.

He goes to buy a piano.

It’s an awful piano. He plays a key and it’s so out of tune he’s amazed the string is still attached. He opens the lid and frowns at its insides. Some of the hammers are bare, and several strings are missing. The paint is nearly all gone. But it’s a cheap piano, and it fits in his house. He buys it, then rings Sam and tells him to help him get it back home to his flat.

“Why the hell are you buying this?” grunted Sam.

“Cas,” says Dean, and that’s all he says, because he’s gotten weak and a bit flabby from working in a bookshop instead of hunting and the upright piano is heavy.

The put it in a corner of the room, along the wall.

“You’ll need to get a piano repairman, or something,” says Sam. “And paint it. It’s disgusting. He’ll catch rabies.” He swipes a finger across the wood and holds the blackened end up for Dean to see.

Dean shoos him out and gets the piano fixed up so that it plays proper notes instead of strangled noises, and then he takes a photo for Castiel.

Castiel, in Mexico, gets on a plane with the last of his money.

 

He hasn’t seen Chicago, and he stares out of the taxi window excitedly. It looks so much like every other city and at the same time it is completely new. He loves it. He cannot wait to explore it.

He texted Charlie for Dean’s address, and she told him he keeps a key under his mat. So he gets a taxi to Dean’s flat and unlocks the door and goes inside. He unpacks his bag and puts everything into the little washing machine crammed into the kitchen beside the dishwasher. He has a shower, and shaves, and uses the unwrapped toothbrush he finds in the bathroom drawer. He goes through Dean’s things to find clothes he’s never worn before.

They all smell like Dean. He breathes them in, and lies down on Dean’s bed. He doesn’t feel as though he is home, not quite, but he does feel that he has reached the end of his journey.

Barefoot and in borrowed clothes, the washing machine quiet in the background, he goes to the kitchen. He finds a tupperware container with leftovers, and puts it in the microwave while he looks for something to drink. There’s one lone beer in the fridge, behind uncooked chicken breast and a few condiments, but there’s milk in the door so he has that. He eats right from the container and standing up, looking through all of the books Dean has. He ignores the piano. He ignores it very much on purpose, because he knows what it means and he doesn’t want to play it until he’s seen Dean.

He picks a book at random - one of the Earthsea books, he read it in Poland, where a Turkish man on his way to Belarus lent it to him - and settles down into the armchair. It’s very comfortable, and the book is nice and familiar, and there’s a nice low feeling of anticipation for Dean getting home.

 

Sam knows that Castiel’s come home, because Charlie messaged him, so he tells Dean that there’s a double episode of a show he’s currently into airing that night, and he shouldn’t miss it. He doesn’t know if Dean’s planning on going out, but he doesn’t want Dean to go out and come home late and drunk or, worse, with someone’s arm slung around his waist.

 

Dean doesn’t know anything. He thinks he knows about the TV show, but he doesn’t know because that’s that just a lie. He figures he can dash home and set it to record, and then go round to Stephen’s for board games. Or, perhaps, just download it later. Though, he muses, stacking shelves with fresh books, if he goes home he can finish yesterday’s leftovers for dinner and set his TV to record the show and he can pick up his expansion set for Dominion. He thinks he promised to lend Ricky _Cat’s Cradle_ , because he can’t believe that he’s never read it, so he can bring that too.

Automatically he checks his phone for a message from Castiel, but there’s nothing. There’s been nothing for a while, now, not since he sent the picture of the piano, but that’s alright. Dean’s feeling calm about it, about Castiel, about him being so far away.

He finishes work and says goodbye to Miyu and to Lee, and he goes home. He checks the mail and goes up the short flight of steps, opens the door to his flat and goes inside, flipping through his letters.

He puts them down on the little table by his door, tosses the keys next to it, toes off his shoes and hangs up his jacket. He checks his phone again, in case Castiel has messaged. He ignores the door to the living room and walks down the hallway to the bathroom, where he uses the toilet and washes his hands, then checks his hair. He goes to his bedroom, where he’s put the boardgames in the closet above all the clothes.

It’s there that he stops. He looks at the floor, where there are more shoes lined up than he owns. One pair of ratty looking canvas ones, and a pair of hiking boots he can’t remember seeing, ever.

He frowns, then he slowly reaches up, pulls down the box of gaming cards, places it behind him on the bed, and looks again at his closet. There are clothes hanging there he doesn’t remember. Shirts that are a little too small for him. A rain jacket he would never buy.

He takes the box and goes into the kitchen. Puts the box on the kitchen bench and frowns intently at the sink.

There’s a rustle behind him and he turns sharply, and startles at Castiel.

Castiel looks at him over the edge of his book. Neither of them speak as Castiel puts the book down and stands up. Dean is working very hard on not hyperventilating.

He thinks he should say something, but he can only stare.

His clothes hang a little loosely off Castiel, but he looks good in them. Better than he did in the trenchcoat. Better than Dean remembers him looking. He looks suntanned and fit. His hair is still a mess, his eyes are still intense and blue.

Dean was worried he go away and come back not looking like an angel, but he looks just like he always did. A little happier, perhaps. A little more comfortable.

He licks his lips, and wants to say something, but Castiel takes another step, into his personal space. It was the first thing he learned to stop doing when he lost his grace. Humans don’t stand so close to each other that they breathe the same air.

Dean’s eyes flick down to Castiel’s lips. He can see a few hairs that missed being shaved, he can smell Castiel, close and sweet, and their lips brush, breathing, just breathing, not a kiss, then Castiel leans forward and Dean closes his eyes to focus on merely the sensation.

Castiel feels warm. He feels like a hundred different countries. He feels like springtime in Russia and summer in the Simpson Desert. He kisses him, deep and soft, and he feels hands settling easily on his hips, like they’ve done this a hundred times before instead of never.

He puts a hand on Castiel’s waist to steady himself, afraid that he’ll fall. His mind has stopped. He kisses Castiel deeply, tasting the inside of his mouth, feeling his chest press against his own. He sighs, content, happy.

He pulls away slightly and leans his forehead on Castiel’s. They just breathe, staying close to keep touching each other.

Dean doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know if he can say anything.

Castiel carefully takes Dean’s hand from his waist and puts it on the kitchen bench, and Dean leans on it, grateful for the support. He watches Castiel walk away and has a horrid feeling that this is it, Castiel is leaving for years again, but then he remembers that Castiel is wearing his clothes, and those are Castiel’s shoes in his closet.

Castiel looks back at him, knowing what Dean is thinking, and gives a small nod of acknowledgement. He’s here. He’s staying.

He sits down at the piano. He lifts the lid very carefully and leans it against the chipped board behind.

He begins to play.

Dean doesn’t recognise the piece, but it’s name is _Comptine d'un Autre Été L'Après_ , and it sounds like everything Dean felt while Castiel was away. Seamlessly Castiel slides from that to Debussy’s _First Arabesque_ , but only a few bars in changes his mind and begins to play several short pieces by Kabalevsky in a row.

Without quite noticing what he’s doing Dean comes to sit down on the couch by the piano, and watches Castiel play. His fingers look beautiful, and the intense stare looks right, here with the music. Then Castiel notices Dean and turns, his fingers breaking from the keys.

The silence is full.

“I didn’t know you could play,” says Dean, eventually.

“I didn’t, either.”

“You’re back,” says Dean. The words feel useless. He doesn’t know how to talk to Castiel right now. He wants Castiel to play music again, or to kiss him again. He reaches out with his hand and Castiel understands.

They touch, easily, gently, a conversation of remembering between them.

Dean leads Castiel to his room, purely because a bed is easier for this, and then tugs up his shirt and kisses down along Castiel’s sternum. He can feel Castiel’s heart fluttering fast beneath the skin, and he sighs as he places his ear against it to listen.

Castiel’s fingers trace a line over Dean’s shirt, getting caught in folds, and just as Dean moves to pull it off his phone on the bedside table vibrates. Stephen. Asking when he’ll get there.

Castiel raises an eyebrow and _oh_ , Dean wants this. He wants Castiel all to himself. So he tells Stephen he’s sorry. Next time. Stephen will understand.

He pulls off his shirt and decides, while he’s up, to take off his pants because there doesn’t seem any point to being embarrassed by how turned on he is that Castiel is here, on his bed, home and safe and with acres of skin to touch.

He lies across Castiel, bare skin on bare skin, slight chest hair scratching together. He kisses him. He kisses his lips and his jaw and his throat, kisses his collarbones and licks the dip between them. He traces lines down Castiel’s waist, feels the very exact hardness of his hips, the taut skin stretching over them.

Castiel does the same, hands running over Dean’s body, feeling his ribs through his skin, feeling the rises of each vertebrae, the shifting of his shoulder blades as he holds himself over Castiel. Eventually, very eventually, their hands go lower, they stroke and tease each other, but the idea of sex seems so very beyond them in that moment. Dean bends his head and swallows Castiel, lips tight around the length of him, and he is scarcely thinking of himself, of anything, except that Castiel is home, and everything is alright.

They lie together as the sun goes down and the sky turns the room dark except for the lights of the street. They are still touching, still re-remembering each other.

They do not talk. They do not talk at all that night, except for soft noises of ecstasy as Castiel enters Dean, or again, later, in the early hours of the morning, half dozing as they stroke each other and cling tight and gasp as they come, soft sounds, scarcely words, kissed into each other’s skin. They fall asleep together, tired and comfortable and alright with the universe as it is.

 

Dean wakes. He wakes slowly, stretches out, and feels a body beside him. He’s not forgotten that Castiel is there, but it feels strange. Unfamiliar, but good. It is just past 7, and he needs to be up, he needs to have breakfast, he needs to go to work.

“You’re still here,” he smiles. Castiel smiles back.

“I’m staying.”

“Good,” says Dean. He kisses him, once and chastely, then rolls out of bed. “Breakfast?”

“Toast. Honey. Coffee.”

Castiel is not a morning person, Dean knows that from accidentally texting one too many times when Castiel was still sleeping in some little room across the world. He lets him stay half-sleeping and makes him toast and coffee and brings it to him. He kisses him again, long and deep, and then he finds his work shirt and puts on his shoes, and kisses him again, and kisses him as he snaps on his watch, and again when he has his keys in his pocket and his jacket on.

“I don’t want to go,” he says, and Castiel kisses him, holds him, and lets him go to work.

 

Dean almost whistles while he works. He’s cheerful, obnoxiously so, but antsy too, because he just wants to go home and see Castiel.

He’s just come back from his lunch break - pie and coffee at the place next door, checking his phone every few minutes in case Castiel needs him for some reason - when there is a polite cough behind him. He turns, expecting it to be a customer looking for the latest Haldeman novel, and finds Castiel instead.

“I wanted to see you,” says Castiel. “And where you work. But mostly I wanted to see you. My taxi driver told me that he likes your bookshop, and he always buys his daughter books from here.”

Dean kisses him, then steps away, slightly abashed, but Castiel grins.

“That’s all I wanted. I am going to see Sam and Sarah, now. Come to their’s, for dinner? I realised I don’t have any presents for them. I travelled everywhere and the only presents I have are for you.”

“They won’t mind,” says Dean. “They know you didn’t travel to find things for them.”

“No,” muses Castiel. “I went to find things for me. Is there a music shop around here? And I need a job.”

Dean puts his hand on Castiel’s shoulder to slow him down.

“I don’t know anywhere that’s hiring. You don’t need somewhere right away. Travel Chicago. Play your piano.”

“It needs painting,” says Castiel. “I’m going to paint it.”

“Do it tomorrow,” says Dean. “I have tomorrow afternoon off, and then all of Sunday. We can do it together.”

“Together,” says Castiel, as if the thought had only just occurred to him. He leans forward and brushes his lips on Dean’s. They’re both drunk on the fact that they can do that, now. They can kiss for real, not just through sharing pictures of the world around them. “Yes. That would be nice.”

“You’re going to see Sammy, now?”

“Yes,” says Castiel. He frowns a little. “I love you. I was reading, and it reminded me that you haven’t heard that. So. I love you.” He puts his hands on either side of Dean’s face and looks intently into his eyes. “Dean Winchester. I love you. Do not forget that.”

“You pulled me out of Hell,” says Dean. He’s learned, through Charlie and Sam and Thomas, that he needs to speak his feelings. It feels good. It feels cleansing, the way he imagines a confession would, if God were listening. “You remade me, and you allowed me to remake myself. I will never forget you, Castiel. And I will never stop loving you.” He smiles, and blushes a little, and steps out of Castiel’s grip. “Now go, before I need to kiss you again.”

Castiel grins. “Sam’s?” Dean nods.

 

Sarah plays the cello, and when Castiel sees it in the corner of the room he asks not at all shyly if he can try it. There’s nothing shy about him, there never was, but the harsh corners have been worn away. Castiel knows all his limbs, and is comfortable with his place in the world. Sam notices it, and Dean notices it, and they nod to each other, satisfied with the way things have gone. Somewhere during the meal Kevin texts saying that he got full marks on a midterm, and he hopes they’re well. It’s a nice reminder that their family extends beyond them. It’s isn’t just the Winchesters against the world anymore. They aren’t really against anything. They’re just living.

Thomas isn’t sure of Castiel, but he sees the way Dean and his father treat him so he decides that he’s alright.

“Your fingers go,” begins Sarah, ready to teach Castiel, but his fingers have already gone where she was pointing. He splays his legs and settles the cello against his thighs, and Dean tries very hard to act as though he is not staring. Castiel closes his eyes, tests the strings, and touches the bow down. He draws a long, squeaky note. He sighs, and tries again. It’s smoother this time, and then he plays a short, cheerful ditty that he remembers hearing on a street in Austria. Thomas laughs and dances to it, while Dean and Sarah clap to the beat.

 

They get a taxi but stop a block from Dean’s flat because Castiel wants to walk and Dean wants a doughnut. They walk hand in hand, leaning against each other.

“Would you have come home for a cello?” asks Dean. He offers the last bite to Castiel, who shakes his head, but as soon as it’s in Dean’s mouth Castiel takes Dean’s hand and licks the sugar from his fingertips.

“I don’t like the cello as much,” says Castiel, when he’s done.

“Oh,” says Dean, mind blank and heat curling low through his body, because Castiel’s tongue was soft on his fingers, and because he liked seeing Castiel play the cello. The legs, the look of concentration, the careful plucking of the strings. It makes him cold and hot all the way through.

“I came home for you,” says Castiel, tightening his grip on Dean’s hand. “The piano helped. But I was in Mexico. I ran out of places to be.”

Over dinner they talked a lot about the places Castiel had gone, passing his phone around to look at all the photos. Dean wants to hear them all, and wants to hear them all now, but he knows that they have time. He’s comfortable knowing that he’ll be 70, and Castiel will be there, and he will be reminded of some strange thing that happened in Vietnam, or Italy, and Dean’s glad that he’ll get to hear everything about this not-quite-angel that Castiel now is.

“Let’s go home,” he says. “I want to take you to bed, and I want you to tell me everything.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Castiel is in Silverton, at the Silverton Hotel, a place in New South Wales where 'Mad Max' and 'The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert' were filmed. 
> 
> Adelaide has two silver balls on top of each other. We call these the Mall's Balls, and are slightly ashamed of them, I think, but we don't want them ever gone. There are also a collection of three bronze pigs in the mall. People sit on them and take photos. Pianos pronouncing that you should play them appear occasionally.
> 
> Guglielmo Marconi is not the inventor of radio. He did believe that, if you had a good enough machine, you could listen to any noise made anywhere anytime. That soundwaves never die. It's a beautiful thought, but not very true. 
> 
> Pieces mentioned at the end: Comptine d'un Autre Été L'Après, from Amelie, by Yann Tiersen; Debussy’s First Arabesque; Kabalevsky's Rondo-Toccata Op. 60 No. 4, Kabalevsky's Toccatina, Op. 27 No. 12, Kabalevsky's Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 46, 1st movement.


End file.
